James Potter and the Currently Untitled Story
by HarmonicJourney
Summary: All was well. That was how Harry Potter's story ended, but James Sirius Potter's story was just beginning. Voldemort may be gone for good, but that won't stop James from finding trouble of his own to get into...


Prologue – The Father Who Lived

Mr. and Mrs. Potter, of Godric's Hollow, England, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. That is, aside from the fact that they were about as abnormal as they come: you see, Mr. and Mrs. Potter were wizards. Because of this, Mr. and Mrs. Potter and the thousands of other witches and wizards like them across both Britain and the entire globe lived a double life of sorts.

While out walking the streets of London, where he worked, Mr. Potter seemed every bit as ordinary as those around him. He had a neatly tailored black suit, complete with a not-too-extravagant silk tie (the design of which varied each day, but only just enough). On his feet he wore a pair of respectable, polished black shoes. His face was always cleanly shaved, and his eyeglasses smudge-free. His hair…well, it was often windy in London; no one would give it a second glace. Once Mr. Potter arrived home, however, his life quickly became far less ordinary. Vegetables for the evening's stew moved of their own accord to a cutting board where a floating knife quickly sliced through them. A broom quickly swished to and fro across the floor, moving without any guidance to those spots which needed cleaning and passing over areas which were already spotless. Even the manner in which Mr. Potter entered his home was far from ordinary; he was not there one second and then simply _was_ the next, with no more than a faint _POP_ betraying his arrival.

"Hey, how was work?" Mrs. Potter asked, glancing up from the newspaper she was reading at the dinner table.

"More of the same," Mr. Potter replied. "There is just not enough getting passed across my desk to keep a whole department of aurors busy these days, so I have to keep sending people over to other departments. Don't get me wrong, it's great that we're not up to our necks in dark wizards anymore, but some of the guys are getting antsy; none of them want to get stuck doing routine magical law enforcement patrols."

"Let me guess: McIntyre is giving you grief again, isn't he?"

"You nailed it, as usual," Mr. Potter sighed, grinning at his wife's intuition. "He came into my office just after lunch today simply _irate_, accusing me of wasting 'an office full of the most talented witches and wizards in Britain on MLE beats a troll could manage.' And as if that weren't enough, he then had the gall to demand a raise because he's doing work 'outside of his job description,' and he's threatening to quit if he doesn't get it."

"Let him quit," Mrs. Potter scoffed. "You're better off with him out of the department than you are trying to manage an ego like that. Honestly, it's like he expects every day as an auror to be the Battle of Hogwarts or something."

"If he really insists on that raise, I'll have to let him quit. But the problem is it's not just him, everyone is itching to get a real case. We haven't had anything serious in almost a month. Managing a department just can't ever be easy can it? Even after all these years I still don't know if I'm the best choice to lead the whole department."

"You've done great, though, and you know it." She folded up the newspaper and walked over to stand just in front of her husband, softly tracing the lightning bolt shape on his forehead with her thumb. "Your scar may have helped you get the job, but you earned the rest yourself."

Mr. Potter looked down into his wife's eyes and smiled. She was probably right (again). Hard as he tried to blend in both out of and within the wizarding community, he would never be able to separate himself from his past and the reputation that went with it, because on top of how terribly unordinary being a wizard made in the first place, Mr. Potter was a bit on the extraordinary side even among his wizarding peers.

On October 31st, 1981, a man who called himself Lord Voldemort came to another house Godric's Hollow, just a few streets away from where Mr. and Mrs. Potter now stood. This Voldemort had come with but one goal: to murder the then-infant Harry James Potter. But, as every witch or wizard young and old knows, things did not go according to Voldemort's plan. After killing Harry's father, James Potter, nothing but Harry's mother, Lily Evans Potter, stood between Voldemort and the child he had come to destroy. Lily pleaded with Voldemort not for her own life, but for the life of her son to be spared. When he saw that not even the threat of death could force Lily Evans Potter to step aside, Voldemort killed her and prepared to finish the job. He cast the killing curse at young Harry, but Harry did not die. For reasons completely unknown to most, and guessed at by a very small few, the curse rebounded and hit Voldemort instead, allowing Harry Potter to live on with nothing but a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead as "The Boy Who Lived."

That night alone was enough to cement Harry Potter's name into wizarding history; he was the first known survivor of the killing curse. Perhaps more importantly, his survival appeared to have also caused the destruction of Lord Voldemort, who had until that point been leading a reign of terror in what came to be known as the First Wizarding War, and who was so feared that most wizards refused to refer to him by anything other than "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

But Harry Potter's legacy did not stop there. Slowly but surely, there began to be signs indicating that Voldemort had not perished that night in 1981, and that although he was certainly weakened, he was in fact very much alive. In 1995, Voldemort's followers succeeded in returning him to human form, and he began a second rise to power. During this time, eventually known as the Second Wizarding War, it was discovered that a prophecy had been made not long before Voldemort attempted to kill Harry Potter as an infant. This prophecy identified Harry as "the chosen one," destined to fight Voldemort to the death: "neither can live while the other survives." On May 2nd, 1998 during the Battle of Hogwarts, this prophecy was fulfilled. Harry Potter met Lord Voldemort in the remnants of the Hogwarts Great Hall and a short battle to the death ensued, leaving Voldemort dead and Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the savior of the wizarding world.

That was 18 years ago. Now Harry was 36 years old, the head of the Auror Office in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry of Magic, and a father of three. He may never be able to escape his reputation as the boy who lived and the chosen one, but he could certainly do great things anyway. And looking back, he supposed that he had. The more he thought about it, the more he began to feel like he was past his prime. But that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He wasn't "just Harry" anymore; he was a father now. It was time for him to guide his children through their own adventures, not time for him to have more of his own.

"Mum!" screamed a voice from the backyard. "Mum! James is flying Dad's broomstick again! He's going above the tree branch! MUM!"

James' laughter rang out clearly as his brother yelled for their mother. He didn't seem to care that Albus was trying to tattle; in fact, it appeared to delight him even more. Harry decided to wait a bit before playing "Dad," and stood at the window to watch James fly. Harry had very clearly explained that they were to fly no higher than one of the tree branches, magically turned much whiter in color than the others around it, yet James was flying as close to it as possible, soaring clearly above it just for a moment or two before dipping back down into the allowed zone. Harry chuckled at the cheekiness of this behavior, imagining briefly just how much trouble James was capable of making when he started at Hogwarts in just a few short days.

Harry opened the back door. "JAMES SIRIUS POTTER, YOU LAND THAT BROOM RIGHT NOW!"

_He'll find some adventures of his own, all right._


End file.
